Sony picks quality over quantity in E3 event light on surprises

In an unorthodox pre-E3 press briefing, in which attendees were ushered through themed areas to watch game trailers rather than sitting in a theatre and listening to announcements, Sony has taken a polar opposite strategy to rival Microsoft. There was no businessy talk, just brand new looks at four massive upcoming Playstation-exclusive games from the biggest Sony-aligned studios.

The Last of Us Part II trailer was sweet but also completely brutal.

A presentation for Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II was delivered inside a tent made up to look like a creepy old church, and was proceeded by live banjo music from the game's composer Gustavo Santaolalla.

The video itself showed a more grown up Ellie sharing an awkward but intimate moment with a friend at some kind of community dance, but juxtaposed this with our first look at actual gameplay, which was just as full of raw violence, fear and horrific gore as the first game.

Advertisement

Next came a first look a Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima, an absolutely gorgeous game set in feudal Japan, which appears to be heavy on quick katana combat.

Not a lot is known about the game, apart from the fact you'll be fighting Mongol invaders, but for an American-produced game it certainly seems to capture the themes.

The mysterious Death Stranding, a Hideo Kojima game, made its third E3 appearance in a row but remains as baffling as ever. This time we learned Norman Reedus' character is some sort of courier, but that hardly sheds any light on the rain that accelerates time, babies that live in chest-mounted tanks or the invisible umbilical beasts that have appeared throughout the trailers.

It's impossible to even discern what the gameplay involves at this point, and with no hint at a potential release date it might fall to E3 2019 to give a more solid view of this one.

The fourth big game shown of was Insomniac's take on Spider-Man, which we know is coming in September. In the trailer Spidey takes on a troupe of his most dangerous villains at a high security prison that's just been busted open.

The video ended on something of a cliffhanger, heavily implying the reveal of a new ally or villain to come in the few months left before release.

Besides the four long presentations, the Sony event hosted a few third party announcements for new games that will be coming to all platforms. These included Control (a new adventure from the team behind Max Payne and Alan Wake), and Capcom's ground-up remake of Resident Evil 2, which was given a release date of January 25 2019.

While Xbox showed more than 50 games, touted its future platform technologies and made big commitments to fixing its platform's most obvious issue, PlayStation stuck to its usual E3 tactic of wowing with a wholly game-focused presentation. It was light on surprises, and three of four big games shown still need a lot of detail filled in before we have a good idea of what they are, but the event reinforced PlayStation's strength: it's the best place for blockbusters.